You will say, if the British Government chooses to deal in opium, that is not our concern. It is most emphatically our concern. Once a month, at these great auction sales, the British Government distributes thousands of pounds of opium, which are thus turned loose upon the world, to bring destruction and ruin to the human race. The buyers of this opium are not agents of the British Government. They are merely the distributors, through whom this drug is directed into the channels of trade. The British Government derives a certain portion of its revenue from the sale of opium, therefore depends upon these dealers to find a market for it. They are therefore, as distributors, the unofficial agents of the British Government, through whom it is sold legitimately, or smuggled around the world. In seeking to eradicate the drug evil, we must face the facts, and recognize clearly that the source of supply is the British Government, through whose agents, official and unofficial, it is distributed. America, so they tell us, is now menaced by the drug evil. Now that prohibition is coming into effect, we are told that we are now confronted by a vice more terrible, far more deteriorating and dangerous. If that is true, then we must recognize our danger and guard against it. Some of the opium and morphia which reaches this country is smuggled in; the rest is imported by the big wholesale drug houses. There is an unlimited supply of it. As we have seen, the British Government encourages poppy production, even to the extent of lending money _without interest_ to all those who are willing to raise this most profitable crop. The monopoly opium is sold once a month to the highest bidders, and some of these highest bidders are unscrupulous men who must find their markets how and where they can. That fact, of course, is of no moment to the British Government. It is of deepest concern to Americans, however. To the north of us we have the Dominion of Canada. To the south, the No-Man's Land of Mexico. At the present moment, the whole country is alarmed at the growing menace of the drug habit, which is assuming threatening proportions. II THE INDIAN OPIUM MONOPOLY